It makes me sad that Sophie Robbins has only written the one book so far, A Hole in the World. If I am wrong please tell me. but I can’t seem to find another.

Now, as this is the first Judy Bloom meets Neil Gaiman Young Adult Fantasy fiction with a lesbian protagonist, I am going to put the crushing weight of my 30-odd other unreviewed books aside for a moment and give it the review it deserves.

This is the plot (didn’t say I wasn’t going to take advantage of Goodreads and good ole cut and paste ; ) )

“Bianca’s life is tediously normal until the day she rescues a fairytale princess from a troll. Then, everything changes and Bianca finds herself being thrust into the role of Prince Charming whether she likes it or not. Despite her misgivings, she’s drawn to the strange Princess and her ways and before she knows where she is she’s forced to fight for her love - and her life.”

So it’s a teen-fighting fantasy-style lesbian love story, I shall just say that a little louder as it’s not that common it’s worth shouting about- IT’S A TEEN-FIGHTING FANTASY-STYLE LESBIAN LOVE STORY. And it is GREAT! What is especially great about it, is that it is written in a completely ‘ordinary’ non-salacious way and set in the ‘real’ world, mostly: Bianca finds a hole next to her local supermarket and that leads to the princess who then follows her back and ends up coming to her local comprehensive.

It isn’t all message-y either, it just takes it for granted that it is a-ok that the heroine is gay and a teenager and takes it from there. I WISH (sorry once you get into shouty mode it’s hard to stop!) that I could time travel (for all sorts of reasons) one of them being that I could give this to my bullied, closeted younger self to read. There were almost nogGirls wielding swords in the books I read in the early 80s and most certainly not any gay ones…doing, well doing anything at all really, other than throw themselves unhappily off cliffs.